The latter was magnificent--this at least was an assurance privately given him by Miss Barrace."Oh your friend's a type, the grand old American--what shall one call it? The Hebrew prophet, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, who used when I was a little girl in the Rue Montaigne to come to see my father and who was usually the American Minister to the Tuileries or some other court.Ihaven't seen one these ever so many years; the sight of it warms my poor old chilled heart; this specimen is wonderful; in the right quarter, you know, he'll have a succes fou." Strether hadn't failed to ask what the right quarter might be, much as he required his presence of mind to meet such a change in their scheme."Oh the artist-quarter and that kind of thing; HEREalready, for instance, as you see." He had been on the point of echoing "'Here'?--is THIS the artist-quarter?" but she had already disposed of the question with a wave of all her tortoise-shell and an easy "Bring him to ME!" He knew on the spot how little he should be able to bring him, for the very air was by this time, to his sense, thick and hot with poor Waymarsh's judgement of it.
He was in the trap still more than his companion and, unlike his companion, not making the best of it; which was precisely what doubtless gave him his admirable sombre glow.Little did Miss Barrace know that what was behind it was his grave estimate of her own laxity.
The general assumption with which our two friends had arrived had been that of finding Mr.Bilham ready to conduct them to one or other of those resorts of the earnest, the aesthetic fraternity which were shown among the sights of Paris.In this character it would have justified them in a proper insistence on discharging their score.Waymarsh's only proviso at the last had been that nobody should pay for him;but he found himself, as the occasion developed, paid for on a scale as to which Strether privately made out that he already nursed retribution.Strether was conscious across the table of what worked in him, conscious when they passed back to the small salon to which, the previous evening, he himself had made so rich a reference; conscious most of all as they stepped out to the balcony in which one would have had to be an ogre not to recognise the perfect place for easy aftertastes.These things were enhanced for Miss Barrace by a succession of excellent cigarettes--acknowledged, acclaimed, as a part of the wonderful supply left behind him by Chad--in an almost equal absorption of which Strether found himself blindly, almost wildly pushing forward.He might perish by the sword as well as by famine, and he knew that his having abetted the lady by an excess that was rare with him would count for little in the sum--as Waymarsh might so easily add it up--of her licence.Waymarsh had smoked of old, smoked hugely; but Waymarsh did nothing now, and that gave him his advantage over people who took things up lightly just when others had laid them heavily down.Strether had never smoked, and he felt as if he flaunted at his friend that this had been only because of a reason.The reason, it now began to appear even to himself, was that he had never had a lady to smoke with.
It was this lady's being there at all, however, that was the strange free thing; perhaps, since she WAS there, her smoking was the least of her freedoms.If Strether had been sure at each juncture of what--with Bilham in especial--she talked about, he might have traced others and winced at them and felt Waymarsh wince; but he was in fact so often at sea that his sense of the range of reference was merely general and that he on several different occasions guessed and interpreted only to doubt.He wondered what they meant, but there were things he scarce thought they could be supposed to mean, and "Oh no--not THAT!" was at the end of most of his ventures.This was the very beginning with him of a condition as to which, later on, it will be seen, he found cause to pull himself up; and he was to remember the moment duly as the first step in a process.The central fact of the place was neither more nor less, when analysed--and a pressure superficial sufficed--than the fundamental impropriety of Chad's situation, round about which they thus seemed cynically clustered.
Accordingly, since they took it for granted, they took for granted all that was in connexion with it taken for granted at Woollett--matters as to which, verily, he had been reduced with Mrs.Newsome to the last intensity of silence.That was the consequence of their being too bad to be talked about, and was the accompaniment, by the same token, of a deep conception of their badness.It befell therefore that when poor Strether put it to himself that their badness was ultimately, or perhaps even insolently, what such a scene as the one before him was, so to speak, built upon, he could scarce shirk the dilemma of reading a roundabout echo of them into almost anything that came up.This, he was well aware, was a dreadful necessity; but such was the stern logic, he could only gather, of a relation to the irregular life.
It was the way the irregular life sat upon Bilham and Miss Barrace that was the insidious, the delicate marvel.He was eager to concede that their relation to it was all indirect, for anything else in him would have shown the grossness of bad manners; but the indirectness was none the less consonant--THATwas striking-with a grateful enjoyment of everything that was Chad's.They spoke of him repeatedly, invoking his good name and good nature, and the worst confusion of mind for Strether was that all their mention of him was of a kind to do him honour.
